This new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling selected from a group of seedlings produced as a result of breeding efforts carried on by me at Sandy, Oreg., since the year 1965 when the cross was made which produced the maternal parent of this new variety. In this case, the breeding efforts were carried on with the objective of producing superior upright-flowering Asiatic lilies in the shades of yellow and gold particularly suited to cut-flower production, thereby representing a range of flowering times to extend the season of cut-flower production.
The seed parent for this new Asiatic lily variety is a complex hybrid with the parentage "Uncle Sam".times.[("Mega".times."Lemon Queen").times."Edith Cecilia"]. I achieved the desired objective by crossing this complex hybrid with the cultivar "Connecticut King" as the pollen parent.
In addition to their large size, the flowers of my new lily plant are characterized by having very broad and thick textured tepals, and an unusual color pattern in which each yellow tepal is lightly flushed with gold in its base portion adjacent the nectary and the rather small spotting maculae occur on each side of the nectary channel.
This new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., and the clones of this new plant, as observed at Sandy, Oreg., show that the new plant is vigorous and is a good grower and propagator having the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and a high degree of disease resistance possessing all of the desired characteristics of form, color, and habit. Propagation of this new plant through successive generations by bulb scale propagation and natural propagation from bulblets has demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of the new plant hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed.